Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is set to begin testing its 5G services across India. Union Minister of Communication Jyotiraditya Scindia shared a video on his X (formerly Twitter) handle, showing a video call made on the 5G-enabled network. In the video, Scindia can be seen testing the service at the C-Dot campus, interacting with a woman via video call to demonstrate the network’s capabilities. “Tried BSNL’s 5G enabled phone call,” Scindia wrote in his post.
Watch the video shared by Minster Jyotiraditya Scindia here:
The Indian government, in its 2024 budget, announced a financial package exceeding ₹82,000 crore to revive BSNL. The funds will be allocated to upgrade the company’s infrastructure and support the rollout of 4G and 5G technologies developed entirely within India. This substantial investment aims to boost the company’s competitiveness against private telecom giants like Jio and Airtel, which are already offering 5G services to consumers.
The 5G trials will be conducted in key locations including Connaught Place, Sanchar Bhawan, JNU campus, IIT, and India Habitat Centre in Delhi, as well as government offices in Bengaluru and select sites in Gurugram and Hyderabad. BSNL is set to provide full support for these trials, offering spectrum, towers, power supply, and other essential infrastructure.
According to a several media reports, proposals have been received from many companies to trial BSNL's 5G service, including Tata Consultancy Service, Lekha Wireless, Suktha Consulting, Coral Telecom, Amantya Technologies, W4S Labs, VVDN, Galore Networks, etc. However, no company has been offered to trial yet. The central government has allocated 700MHz, 2200MHz, 3300MHz and 26GHz spectrum bands to BSNL to start 5G service. Currently, BSNL is trialling 5G service on the 700MHz spectrum band.